Federal Suit Challenging Texas Med-Mal Caps

A federal declaratory-judgment suit was filed yesterday challenging whether the Texas medical-malpractice caps violate the federal constitution. The suit was filed in Marshall and assigned to Judge Ward of the Eastern District of Texas.

I’ve only made a quick scan of the complaint, but its procedural complexity — proposing that the court certify both plaintiff and defendant classesa plaintiff class of those affected by the medical-malpractice caps statewide, as well as a third class of defendant Texas trial judges — appears to be the plaintiffs’ attempt to avoid both the State’s direct immunity from such a suit and the web of federal jurisdictional and prudential problems that might arise from the fact that at least some of the named plaintiffs have ongoing state lawsuits over this same subject matter with the named defendants. With that in mind, I’m also not quite sure how this federal suit will avoid duplicative litigation. One assumes that, as the plaintiffs’ state court cases proceed, they will be forced to raise or waive these same arguments.

1 response so far ↓

The case strikes me as fundamentally weak. Any one of the plaintiffs who participate in the class could raise the constitutional issues in their own case, and I can’t see the law changing from this. Still, I’ve little experience in federal law and class actions.

I’m a little interested in the motivation for the case though. One wonders if Jim Perdue is starting to feel the pinch of tort reform, or maybe just a hankerin for the good ole days. If this was ATLA organized we would expect more publicity.